Blender is an extremely versatile 3D creation and animation suite. Since it is fully scriptable in Python, Blender may be used to generate animated 3-dimensional plots of data or mathematical functions. Below is an example of one way to generate such a plot.

Important information

The script below has been tested with Blender 2.78a for Linux. It should generally be compatible with other versions and operating systems. The script works with the pristine Blender startup file; heavily modified startup files may break certain assumptions.

To run the script, simply call blender --python blenderplot-ani.py

To create the plot in a different base file, instead use blender basefile.blend --python blenderplot-ani.py.
The order of arguments matters here.

Note that the animation data will not be saved with your .blend file! This means you must run the Python script on a pristine "background" .blend file each time you wish to examine the geometry or create a render. If the .blend file is saved, only the first frame will be captured.